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February 26th, 2012
Smart or Dumb? ¿Debo sentir inteligente o estupido?
Asi es la vida que cuando no necesitamos pensar en nada, tenemos pensamientos buenos. Caminando en las calles de Bogota, vi un seña para carrera septima. Y es muy increible que nunca pensé antes de ver esto seña que septiembre, octubre, noviembre y deciembre corresponden al siete, ocho, nueve y diez! (Si, gracias por felicitaciones!) Aún en inglés, la conneción entre palabras September, October, November y December no es dificil de ver. Pero, no mis queridos, nunca esto pensé! Creo que es muy posible que casi toda la gente sabe los significados, de estas palabras, especialmente esos que pensaban en los nombres de meses.
Asi, ¿debo sentir inteligente o estupido?
Y, una otra pregunta – ¿porque los meses numeros 9, 10, 11 y 12 corresponden a los numeros 7, 8, 9 y 10? Cuando tuvimos este cambio de dos meses?
January 29th, 2012
English vs Espanol: Second person vs. third person conjugations
Contrast these English and Spanish sentences
| Person | English | Español | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | I sing. | Yo canto. | ||
| 2nd | You sing. | (Tu) cantas. | “s” in Spanish | |
| 3rd | He sings. | Él canta. | “s” in English | |
| – | ||||
| 1st | I eat. | Yo como. | ||
| 2nd | You eat. | Tu comes. | “s” in Spanish. | |
| 3rd | He eats. | El come. | “s” in English | |
This general notion that verbs for the second person end in “s” and for the third person do not end in “s” is fairly standard in Spanish. The reverse is fairly standard in English.
The obvious question follows: is this kind of conjugation fairly common in the respective Romance and Germanic families? Is the contrast a common contrast between those families?
January 12th, 2012
Etymology – When it doesn’t work (And some phantonyms)
All of us have a conscious or subconscious focus on etymology that serves us well, except at times when it doesn’t! See this video for an example.
Once in a while we come across a phantonym – a word that sounds opposite of what it means. The word “suffrage” is an excellent case in point, even though it wouldn’t qualify as a phantonym. The word root has been lost and the word sounds similar to “suffering” and has a negative ring to it. That combined with the age of the kids, I don’t take the video too seriously, I think it just makes a good joke, that’s all.
A similar confusion exists between bondage (bad) and bonding (good). I know that there is at least some confusion about this topic, because even one of our recent Presidents has said that “Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child.”
January 1st, 2012
An interesting note in Spanish
Here is one thing that I observed that has been interesting even to native speakers.
Firstly, the first person present tense marker usually is “o”. For example: “yo hablo”, “yo pienso”, “yo camino”, “yo digo” etc. This is especially true for regular verbs. Typically, in these cases, the 3rd person marker ends in “a” or “e”, for example: “el habla”, “el piensa”, “el camina”, “el dige” etc.
Now, consider the pretérito for the same, and the situation is sort of reverse. For example: “yo hablé / el habló” “yo pensé / el pensó” “Yo caminé / el caminó” “yo dije / el dijo”
Interesting, no?
August 18th, 2011
Recent vanity plates
Saw some cool vanity plates recently.
- XKCD 437 – Fittingly, this was an SUV.
- G8RFAN – Fittingly again, Florida themed plates.
- R3 GLS – A minivan, probably referring to a soccer mom with 3 girls.
- 5JABI – Could be from more than one country, but the person’s mother tongue is one of top 10 spoken languages.
- MOCKBA – Person is from the city with the largest number of billionaires.
May 25th, 2011
“US Stocks up” – A case for Esperanto
As I read the headline today: “US Stocks up”, I was a bit put off by the (even if slightly) ambiguous nature of this statement. Does it mean that US stock markets are trading higher today, or does it mean that US companies are stocking up with larger portions of supplies? From the context, a lot can be inferred, but do you find it acceptable that we have to look at the context to infer what a headline means? Or does the mere fact that two perfectly valid sentences with entirely different meanings can be exactly the same, cause you to squirm? (It makes me squirm, because the word “stocks” can be both a noun and a verb, and I just can’t be sure what it is in this case.)
Now I am sure ambiguity has its advantages – poetry, funny pictures, man trying to answer if his wife looks fat, etc, but a news headline is not exactly the place where I find ambiguity to be so critical.
And that brings us to Esperanto – the magical language where ALL nouns have to end in “o” and all present tense verbs have to end in “as”. How would these sentences be written in Esperanto? Well, I don’t know Esperanto, but I am happy to take a pass at it using the grammar, as described here.
Usonaj stockoj tradas upo. (US stocks are trading up.)
Usonaj companoj stockas upo. (US companies are stocking up.)
Whether or not I have it correctly here, the marked difference in the two sentences in Esperanto is refreshing. 
March 20th, 2011
Story of the Human Language – Words vs Sentences
My previous posts about etymology may have revealed my affinity for this field. Recently, I have been going through John McWhorter’s The Story Of Human Language
So here is the generally accepted evolution tree of English, with some notes that I collected from this reading. Some of the comments may be influenced by the fact that McWhorter is an expert in the language contact phenomena.
Here are a few things that I found of interest:
- About one-third of vocabulary doesn’t trace to Indo-European but to some other language (possibly Semitic). For example, the word “maiden” traces back to Proto-Germanic “mahathis”, which may be related to Proto-Semitic word “mahath”. [I can't help but notice that Spanish word for maiden would be something like mujer, but I don't know the root of that.]
- Tense markers for verbs that use vowels, i.e., ablaut and Germanic Strong Verbs are possibly derived from some semitic language where this method of marking the tense via vowels (instead of a prefix) is the standard.
- English is the only Proto-Indo-European language that has so little gender. Other PIE languages do have gender. This points to the language contact with the Vikings and possibly is one of the grammar simplifications made as part of that language contact.
- Grimm’s law which explains many of sound shifts through this evolution. For example “p” in PIE is usually “f” in English. For example “Pater” in Latin is “Father” in English, etc.
McWhorter also talks about one sentence reconstructed in the Proto-Indo-European of about 2500 BC (hypothetically, since there are no written records from that time). The sentence is: “On hearing that, the sheep ran off into the plain.” This is translated into PIE as “Tod kekluwōs, owis agrom ebhuget.” Word for word, that would be: “That hearing sheep field fled.” From this, I can understand “tod” to be “that” with reasonable sound shifts and changes. Kekluwōs was a form of the verb that did eventually become hear. “Sheep” is not from PIE root, although “owis” does lead to word for sheep in other languages, and also to scientific classification – the genus ovis.
And it wouldn’t complete this post if I didn’t confess my new found love for Esperanto and amusement with Solresol.
March 1st, 2011
Define: Synchronicity
Here is an idea for another time – a video dictionary. This site (presumably videodictionary.com) should show a short video (5 – 10 seconds) for each word.
For example, for “synchronicity”, it would show:
Synchronicity: noun, and the first 4 seconds of the video below.
November 16th, 2010
Oh Crapulous!
The M-W.com’s word of the day – crapulous, which means marked by intemperance especially in eating or drinking or being sick from excessive indulgence in liquor, may sound like a curse word, but it is actually a perfectly legit word tracing back to the Latin word “crapula” meaning “intoxication”. The related word “crapulence” is a word for sickness caused by drinking. A nice clarification is also available at Daily Writing Tips, and it makes Word Spy’s favorite list. Not bad for a word sounding that bad .